Day 189

When I turned on the television this morning, the news was all about General McChrystal. I feel sorry for the General. What's happening to him has happened to almost all of us on a much smaller scale. People are always asking what you're thinking these days. They encourage you to be open and candid. Generally, people who ask you to be candid don't really want to know what you're thinking. They want you to agree with what they are thinking. The smart, successful folks in this world are the ones who've come to realize that when someone asks what you're thinking, it's almost always best to keep your mouth shut.

I saw another television news team in the park this morning when I was walking the dogs. They didn't want to interview us like they did last Winter though. I think the news crew must have been doing a story about summer school programs for children, because they were filming a bunch of kids and their teacher next to the lake. We might have made the news anyway, because as we walked by, all the kids looked up and in unison said "Look, it's a Dalmaaaatian."

After lunch, I went over to have a look inside the new Second Chance Treasures store. I was impressed at how professional everything seemed. You'd never know that the entire store was put together by a bunch of animal rescue volunteers. I think a resale shop like this is a great idea for fundraising. The store gets most of its merchandise by cleaning up after high-end estate sales, so inventory costs are very low. The rescue group gets invited to some very nice estate sales, so the store is filled with unique and unusual items. It all seems to work. I told the manager that I'd come back next week and take a bunch of new photos that I will use to relaunch the store website with a new and better look.

It's a good thing I didn't have any important deadlines today, because I had several major computer problems. One of my large external backup drives crashed and took a ton of video files down with it. I tried with no success to revive the disk using Diskwarrior. The Apple disk utility didn't work either. I'll try taking the drive up to a data recovery place tomorrow, but I'm afraid that I may have seen the last of these files. Luckily, most of the files were from projects that I completed several years ago. I still hate when this happens though. If I ever do need to re-edit the video clips on this drive, it's not going to be easy.

Dalmatian of the Day

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